WRF simulations against sodar measurements of extreme winds and local breeze circulations serial events

Abstract

Abstract. Forty percent of the world's population live within 100 km of the coastal line. Coastal zones are changing because of the interaction between the oceans and the land as well as human activities. The processes in coastal Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL) have being continuously studied as they are important for the ecosystems, recreational activities, fishery, economics and renewable energy resources. Remote sensing (RS) measurements of the ABL have being performed with sodar at Ahtopol synoptic station (Southeast Bulgaria) since 2008. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) criteria for “rare” events have been applied to the period August 2008–October 2016 of the RS measurements and a reference extreme wind speed profile has been obtained. In this study, we test the ability of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model with Mellor-Yamada-Janjic ABL scheme to simulate extreme wind events, followed by sea breeze. As a measure of the ability of the used model configuration to reproduce the spatial and temporal structure of these complex weather situations some basic statistical metrics has been used. The results have shown relatively good agreement between measured and modeled wind speed but the sea breeze development has not been reproduced by the model.